Wednesday, August 4, 2010

In Hindsight: Female Portrait (Basic)

A couple of months ago, I took a shot of my wife with a shoot-through umbrella, using the sun to provide backlight. I was very conscious of the positioning of the lights, and the position of her face to the lights, but I wasn't conscious of the position of her body with respect to the lights. I made the mistake of allowing her body to face the umbrella.

In her book on portrait lighting, Sculpting with Light, Allison Earnest recommends having female subjects turn their bodies away from the light in order to appear more feminine. If I had followed that simple suggestion, the shot above would have looked far more flattering.

The foregoing tip from Sculpting with Light is just one of many valuable techniques in that book which I will be reviewing shortly.